Game Mess Mornings 08/11/23

You'll be luck don't beat it's the internet. You're busy. Let's do this
for August eleventh, twenty twenty three. For the next hour or so,
let me help you sort through the world of gaming on Game mess Mornings Live
with Me Jeff Grubb. Today rock Star is embracing the role playing community,
and somehow Sony isn't happy with PS five sales. But first please join me
and welcoming today's co host the Games Mornings. It's Jesse, Donka Basa Norris,
Jesse. How are you doing. I am doing wonderful. I'm in
the the final preparation for non stop game releases that doesn't end for three months.
Yep. It's it is upon us. The season is upon us.
John Madden saw his shadow and just pooped out like fifty games. So here
it is. Games aren't even waiting for John Madden anymore. We're gonna get
a We've already gotten a couple things this month. We're gonna get a few
more things. It's all just happening with relentlessly this year. It's it's been
a lot. I continue play Pittman four and really enjoy it. It is
fun to play Pittman four. Well, everyone else is freaking out about boulders
Gate three. Now, I'm just like, you guys want to talk about
Pickman and everyone's like, no, we we're fucking over here. That's how
we're living our lives. I'm like, okay, I'm leaving the pitmen alone.
That's I'm not doing that to them. That's weird. So yeah,
that's that's my life. But I don't know, Jesse, how are you
keeping up with all these games? Barely? I bet did Atlas fallen?
It's all right, it's gonna get crushed because of its release window. Just
just finished up and made the review for Shadow Gambit, which I can't say
anything about because it's not until next week when it comes out. But that
is from the Shadow Tactics and Desperado's team Mimmi Games. They make really good
real time ISS strategy stuff, and so going from that, then immediately going
to Armored Core hopefully, then after that immediately going to Starfield, and we've
also got Immortals, and then we've got See If Stars and then it just
keeps going. In September and it never freaking stops. Even just covering one
platform for Xbox has been insanely difficult this year, which is why every time
I see people say no games, I say, I will proddle you.
I want to bop you one exactly too much everywhere. If we covered everything,
we need a team ten times the size. It's it's been a crazy
year. Yep. And uh, it looks like something could still happen with
hardware. Do you see that there's a leak that I didn't put in the
news because it's hard to verify that PlayStation five slim image that's going around everyone's
talking about that's weird because I heard so there were rumors that it was gonna
be pretty much the same, just a little smaller, and then an image
hits that's pretty much the same, just a little smaller. Yeah, the
ones need the other like you never know. Yeah, there's a little ugly,
Yeah really really ugly. Doesn't care. It loves to be ugly.
Uh. Yeah, there's like a little like line through the middle, like
of the panel, a little less of a pop caller, a little I
don't know. It's easy to buy, easy to believe, And that's that's
that would be the one that would have the It would look even stupid or
probably once you attach the optional hard drive, right, although you know it
is like so it's like four panels, it looks like so like two two
on the top, two on the bottom. Maybe like one of those panels
pops off and the drive slots in really handsomely into this thing or whatever,
and then you can with how they've been with hardware ever since the PS four
Pro. I'm gonna guess it's not gonna look good no matter what. Yeah,
probably not. It's gonna look like an HD DVD drive just dangling off
the side more than likely. Okay, we have a lot to get into.
Let's talk about what we do here first. Most week days, I
Jeff grab will help piece your gaming life back together. That includes breaking news
and maybe even some of our own original reporting. For all these topics,
I'll get the input of a bona fide expert who will make me look smart.
If you were watching live on Twitch, welcome. You can always listen
to the show later on podcast feeds by searching for Game mess Mornings, or
find the RSS on giant bombed dot com. You can also catch the show
later with chapters and time stamps on YouTube. Hello YouTube. Okay, we
have a lot to get into, so let's start the morning mess with Rockstar
just made a big investment in Grand Theft Auto role playing. This comes from
Michael mcworder at Polygon. Rockstar Games announced to Friday that it had acquired CFX
dot or, the team behind Grand Theft Auto five Mod five M and Red
Dead Redemption two MO red M, two, popular mods that power custom multiplayer
and robust role playing experiences on those games. Over the past few years,
we've watched with excitement as rock Stars creative community have found new ways to expand
the possibilities of Grand Theft Auto five and Red Dead Redemption two, particularly through
the creation of dedicated roleplay servers. That's a quote from the studio. It's
available on the rock Star Newswire website. As a way to further support those
efforts, we recently expanded our policy on mods to officially include those made by
the roleplay creative community rocks and then now that's done. With the quote,
rock stars acquisition of the CFX dot r E team the studio as will help
them find new ways to support the incredible community and improve the services they provide
to their developers and players. Grand Theft Auto five and Red Dead Redemption two
have already have robust multiplayer components, but five M and red M go further,
letting players use custom vehicles, maps, and weapons, and inhabit those
game worlds as virtually anyone. On Friday, at time of publication, the
five M websites said that more than one hundred and seventy thousand players we're using
the mod on custom servers. Jesse. This feels this felt for a while
pretty inevitable that Rockstar would have to go in and do something about the role
playing servers in terms of bringing it into you know, the family and saying,
you know, when we put out a Grand Theft Auto six, I
mean all the games we put out in the future, when they have big
online modes, they are gonna have to have some integration ready to go for
role playing. And this feels like them saying, let's just do the whole
hog, Let's just do the damn thing. Let's go get still, come
to the team that does these things and make it native in the game or
native close to native. Maybe it's just one more install going forward, but
making sure it's officially supported, and that's not too surprising, as we've seen
Grand Theft Auto role Playing Service continue to be some of the biggest and most
popular things on Twitch. For example, the moment there's a lot of money
to be made, it was gonna be there's it's kind of like emulation,
the moment emulation starts possibly touching. Like when Xbox finally went after retail emulation,
it wasn't because of Nintendo or Sony. It's because they started doing three
sixty games. They're like, hey, no, we offer those in back
compact and we make money off that. You're not doing it. And with
this, this is how GTA is popular for people watching it on Twitch.
So if you want to get into that and promote that, like they're not
making any money, they're not going to do it themselves by default until it's
their thing. Yes, and it's either we're gonna it was either they're going
to take the pr hit and kill it and kill this thing that's making a
ton of money, or be like, okay, we we get our piece.
Because you know that's what Take two is obviously very much all about.
Yep, and you can see, I mean, I know everyone's already the
wheels are turning. Everyone's imagining how rock Star is going to be able to
make money off of this you know, incorporating stores into the role playing servers
and stuff like that. That will be a thing I do wonder like where
rock Star will draw the line because you know, just let people bring their
own stuff in like and express themselves. That's a big part of the role
playing community servers. How much of that are you going to stop or you
know, my imagination is it will be a lot like Minecraft, uh because
Minecraft has a store, but even on like the Windows version, they opened
up the tools so you could just make whatever you want in there. So
if you want to make your own skins, like they a lot like when
they were introducing the store, like here's the thing and then you know,
if your stuff is good, just put it in the store. But just
do that put you could sell your stuff. It's it's the roadblock siffacation of
it all. Like that's with less if than roadblocks. Right well, listen,
that's that's a low ball, high Bard come under. Yeah, it's
they will almost certainly find a number of ways to monetize this. Uh.
It's just that's gonna be a balance that they're going to have to maintain of
keeping those fans happy and not not upset that like, oh, Rockstar ruined
this because they're trying to charge a bunch of money, Like, we didn't
come here to be in your ecosystem, your you know, your in game
economy. But there's one company you can trust micro transaction wise, it's too
kay Yep, definitely, and yeah I can get that out. Yeah.
And then the user generated content, Yeah, that's that is where all these
companies see a big potential to make a lot of money. And this is
a platform exactly for that. So and people are if you do empower creators
to sell things to each other. That's it's maybe one big way to get
around these things is to say, well that encourages more development, and we're
just gonna take a cut. You guys are selling stuff to each other,
Like someone made a cool thing. You want that thing, Well, they're
selling it to you. So it's man, it's kind of It's what happened
a lot with Bethesda with their modern community and then hiring people out of it
and stuff like that. You see it more and more. It happened with
three for three and all the forgers and them becoming employees. So I just
rarely trust Take two on any of this. But I'm I'm hopeful and happy
to be wrong. Yep, this is the role playing scene has continued to
be popular, Marino pointing out in Chad it's not as popular as it was
during the pandemic, but you know, nothing is, but it's it's maintained.
I know there's several streamers that I've followed for a long time who are
just now basically doing that full time, just full time role playing and Grand
Theft Auto, and you know, their audiences have continued to grow. People
are hungry for that content, and I think it's it's something that Grand Theft
Auto and you know, potentially a red dead redemption going forward. But rock
Star at the very least can do that. Very other few companies would be
able to pull off. Like if if rock Star wants to introduce Grand Theft
Auto six with Grand Theft Auto Online two and then there's also role playing stuff
going along all that. I do believe that they can actually make that work
and actually make something successful out of that. Where if another company tried to
come in there and be like we see GT online roleplay doing really well,
we're going to try to make our own one of those, I think that
would be very challenging, especially because like even the rps are seen, is
many years and different iterations of getting to where it is now. If you
go back and look at some of the early stuff, it's super JANKI but
I imagine rock Star's main thing is just going to be defining rules on what
you can and can't do, when otherwise it mostly runs itself and it's people
making stuff, and a lot of those people who are making it were the
ones running the servers, so if they are now rock Star employees, it
probably won't change too much and it's just going to be you can use our
stuff now. You can officially use our stuff now probably I wouldn't imagine characters
and whatnot, but some other stuff you can you can more easily use,
because they would actually get pretty mad if you use too many official textures and
whatnot. But like from the Joker in there and Batman, that type of
stuff probably won't be as common as it used to be. Yeah, yeah,
it'll be. It'd be similar to like how but as the official mods
work versus you know the wild west of just getting mods on PC however you
want. And so you got a Nexus mods, you can you can turn
any Bethesda game into full on Balder's Gate three Bare Sex if you're really exactly
yes, and they do not empower you to do that through their official mods
support, although the official mode support is still pretty good. Uh. I
wonder if more people will try role playing if it's like if it feels official,
if it feels like, oh, this is something, because like it's
something where I look at, like we we could do that, we should
be able to go massively multiplayer online co op. Ye. It's it's just
it's like going to be the most popular thing because the people that don't want
PvP, that do just want to hang out and mess around with other people.
It's it's perfect for that if you find the right group of people to
play with, right and and it's that that's thing right now where it's like
I look at oh, no, you know, no Pixel, the big
the big role playing server that everyone points to us, like this is a
great example of really funny content and stuff like that. They you know,
they're invite only. It's it's pretty hard to get in, like even if
you know people. It's like it's like, do I want to put myself
in a situation where I have to like commit to behaving in a certain way,
and like, you know, well if we get invited, like do
I bring Dan Reicherd in there, and like, well he get it,
It's like, well no, probably not. So it's there like another place
we can go. I think if rock Star had an official thing where it's
like, you know, we've put in put like a few barriers on here
to like let you experience it in a safe playground area where you're the only
people you're gonna upset are this giant corporation. It's like, Okay, that's
one thing, and then I think that would be like that would feel like
I would like experiment with that, and then later all these other server still
exists, like that's like okay, now that we find that this is really
fun, maybe we can go on to No Pixel or whatever else. Yeah.
Like so like I think even No Pixel they had a public server,
which was just more of the wild West mess around versus the white listed server,
which is where you've got to apply and you're gonna be like, yeah,
I'm gonna follow the rules and I'm gonna always stay in character, and
I'm because there's a lot of people streaming and there's a lot of people doing
it seriously but there are ones you can just go in and learn the ropes.
Yeah, but it but I totally I'm sure there is. But I
think something about like dangerous to stream on right, Yes, and it's like
the the that still feels like I expect those to be like playing with the
with play money and like playing poker with fake money, where it's like this
isn't actually indicative of what the real thing that everyone looks to as the real
thing would feel like. And you know, something a lot of control stuff
that's really unique per server. So they're really good for jumping in because that's
what I've done. I've just jumped in, figured out how things work on
that server and that version of the mod, and then once you get all
that down, it makes it a help a lot easier year you're not feeling
like you're learning while you're on the official one. We really want to on
a show, yes, And I think I think making it making something an
official that is similar to that, I think it's the next step towards opening
this up to even more people. Although you know role plan is always going
to be for specific audience, just turns out that audience much bigger and more
passionate I think people will maybe might have once predicted it's improv comedy for the
most part and mix a drama and stuff like it's people like that, especially
if you're good at it. Yep, it's uh, it's I think it's
going to have a place in gaming content going forward for forever, I expect,
because people really enjoy that kind of thing. Really curious if they if
people try and mod that into Starfields, because they've already been trying to modern
into Skyrim like Sky Big Skyrim co op and it's really cool. I think,
you know, Skyrim makes a lot of sense because that's the kind of
game where you know, you do the mod where you just started some random
character in that world, and like that's almost more fun at this point.
So it's like if you could just do that and then other people are inhabiting
are inhabiting it, that could be very neat h Sony says the reaction to
its price drop has been weak in the UK. This from Jordan Midler at
VGC. Sony has said it's recent PS five price cut hasn't yet hasn't yet
led to the reaction ahead hoped for in the UK. As transcribed by Seeking
Alpha, Sony COO Hierroke to Tokey said during the company's recent financial called by
Regions. Currently, in Japan, the sales are strong, and the same
holds true for Asia. In North America, their sponsor, the promotion has
been quite favorable. In United Kingdom, it's a bit weak. But Europe
as a whole has been performing quite well. We kind of talked about like
this deal and some of the stuff, but previously was like, oh,
you know, it's doing very well according to GfK, the tracking thing,
and that's what we talked about yesterday. Apparently Sony's seeing these numbers and they're
like, oh, it's up you know, forty percent, seventy percent,
and by some measures it's up five hundred percent. It's Sony still not happy
with that, they said. PS five hardware sales were three point three million
units for the first quarter, a significant increase of thirty eight percent year on
year. This amount is somewhat less than expected progress towards our fiscal goal.
They do go on to say, like, hey, we drop the price
to try to juice these hardware sales, because that's our primary goal right now
is to get to twenty five millions sold by the end of the fiscal year,
and to do that, like in certain territories like the UK and really
a lot of other places as well, we are significantly cutting the price.
And that led to the Yeah, PS five sales were up seventy three percent
and then for the year and then up forty seven percent compared to I think
like the week before in terms of before the deal went into effect. But
Sony said, yeah, this is it did not lead to the sprint to
pick up PS fives that they thought they would see. I'm just like I,
you know, it's selling faster than ever before. How is this not
fast enough? Jesse? I think their entire goal, this entire generation has
been we want to get so far ahead that once Xboxes all their purchases and
everything start hitting, they just can't catch up in any meaningful way. And
so for them it's they were they wanted to have everything right away, and
then they didn't. It all got delayed twenty twenty two. They still had
some stuff in twenty twenty where Xbox only had ports. Really, so they
just they wanted to put the nail in this generation. And I don't think
they feel like they have because even though we get so used to big numbers
and consoles sold and that being the metric that in the end, it just
comes down to, well, how much money are you making every quarter?
And they're still making more than anyone, but they're not an insane amount ahead
of Xbox and Nintendo like they want to be. So they want as much
of you know, the markets this size, and they want every bit of
it that they can get. As where Phil's talked about before, he wants
a bigger market where even if he keeps the same size or it only grows
a little, it's a much bigger market. So you're just making way more,
which is all shareholders care about. So in the end, they want
these enormous numbers right away. They probably want every PlayStation they ship to sell.
And so if it's not as much as they were hoping for, then
I just have to guess they're still selling really well. They're just not selling
out NonStop like they had been before when they had less supply. Yeah,
and it's you know, Sony was has said it's selling about as fast as
PS four now when you line them up like in terms of like month the
month, at this point, it's selling faster than the PS four. The
PS five is, but if you like, line it up from from launch
for both systems. The PS five was about two months behind the pace,
and that was almost entirely due to a lack of consoles in the supply chain.
Now that that's been solved, though, it feels like it's going to
race past that and it honestly it might have already done so, like we
might already be there because it's it's selling that fast. And there is an
issue too, where like the economy is not great, so things are going
to slow down, but capitalism doesn't care. It's just as like, well,
I can fire all these people, like you see with Microsoft even though
they're making more money than ever, like they hired NonStop in the pandemic,
and they're like, okay, don't need you all now, yep, see
later, Like all the corporates will just do that. And it's like,
well, instead of pulling back on executive bonuses and other things, take out
the little guys. Everything we can do to make our numbers look as good
as possible, because that is all that really matters in the end. Uh.
This you know the way Sony's position this is, Hey, this is
about meeting that huge target that we said, but you know, I continue
to say it probably is also about that SLIM system, right, Like they
want to get a lot of these out of the out of the stores,
out of retail, out of their shipment centers or whatever, so they can
make room for the Slim and let launch that and not have that sit next
to a bunch of these systems for a while. Right, Keeping anything in
storage costs a lot of money. So like you, it's not just well
we made these, We've now shipped these. It's like, well, if
you ship them and you've got to wait and they only have so much space
in each store, and you're just holding things and you're waiting, there's always
the numbers game of trying to match demand without out pacing it because then you're
just paying money to have things sit in stock. Yep, exactly, So
that they are looking to reduce the possibility of that happen by any means,
and that means actually even cutting the price. Do you think the this sales
deal, this this cutting the price, uh, will will have any effect
on how they position the price of the Slim or a bundle including the Slim,
Because it's hope. So because they were they were they went up,
they did go I was hoping at the very least the Slim would go back
down to five. I was hoping or would be great when you're this deep
end. But they're selling NonStop, so there's no point. They're not going
to cut the price severely unless they want to be super aggressive, and they're
they're actual manufacturing costs have dropped down, because I think that's the reason you've
barely ever see the series X on sale is because the things still cost a
lot of money to make comparative to what they sell it at. So if
they can, if they can get the slim down and the DVD drive or
Blu Ray drive isn't some crazy amount of money like four hundred and four fifty,
and then you're adding fifty to one hundred for the drive, then yeah,
it'll definitely help a lot because that five fifty and more globally it didn't
really change much. That's why I'm always curious. They just kept selling,
So I do wonder will they even bother dropping much? Right, it's just
gonna be about aggression because it doesn't seem like they have to. Yep,
And that's that that's the thing here. It's like so they have a chance
to reset the pricing, you know, and I think, especially if this
slim comes in with more storage, I think they will easily keep it at
least at the same price that it's been, or like you said, go
back down the original price worldwide. Either way, I think I do not
think that they will not have something on the shelves that there's gonna be something
on the shelves that has five hundred dollars, Like they want five hundred dollars
to be the price, and they don't need like their main PS five to
be four hundred compared to Xbox is five hundred, because they like everything's still
selling their their the pace is really good, and why take that huge that's
significant hit when they don't have to. I just don't expect them to.
But and if they've got the Pro coming in, you know, a year
or two after that, then that can be then maybe you go four fifty
five fifty exactly, you know, yes, so, and that's you know,
similar to kind of what happened with the with PS four, you know,
not exactly there's some differences, but the Pro came in and maintained that
high price point but didn't go up at by any significant amount, and maybe
this does, but probably not, and then the previous model, and then
eventually the slim would just kind of slot in about one hundred dollars cheaper or
whatever. So yep, that's that seems to be probably how they'll handle it
here, Okay, Destiny two taps Keith David as Zavala to replace the late
Lance Reddick. This is from Ethan Gootch at Kotaku. Ever since John Wick
and the Wire actor Lance Reddick suddenly and unexpectedly passed away earlier this year,
Destiny two fans have been wondering what would become of his iconic character, Commander
Zavala. Today, Bungee announced that veteran actor Keith David, beloved for his
video game work in Halo and Mass Effect, will take over in twenty twenty
for It's the Final Shape expansion. Lance's iconic voice led us through the most
intense moments in Destiny's history, and his impact on our guardians, our community,
and Bungee as a whole will never be forgotten. Bungee announced, then
that's Bungee a quote, and they announced that on August tenth, yesterday,
Keith David a prolific actor on stage and in television, films, and games,
will assume the English language voice of Zavala in the Final Shape and beyond.
Separately, Lance's existing lines in game will remain untouched for the upcoming release.
This is I think this is cool. This is right. I think
Keith David can really take over that role, do well. Keith David put
out a really nice message talking about Lance Reddick and the work he's done,
and it was all just it was really sweet and touching. And I love
I love, I love Lance Reddick. I love Keith Keith David. This
is pretty cool, I think. And it's it's nice to see an actor
be like just pay respects, say I'm just gonna, you know, do
my best to live up to Lance, and Keith David can do that.
So hey, shout out to this. I think this is pretty cool.
I'm going for one great actor with an incredible voice to another great actor with
an incredible voice, and yeah, it's about the best choice I think they
could have made. I mean, I think it's also it's like a testament
to like how good Lance Reddick's voice. If Keith David is who they needed
to get to replace you right, Keith David and all time voice actor known
for for the you know, the tamper of his voice and all that,
And it's like Lance Reddick was right there with the same the same level of
gravitas when he spoke, so absolutely you know this this was the probably the
right choice, and it seems like they handled it pretty well. Do you
think there was any consideration of them like being like, well, maybe we
should just leaves Valla behind or something like that, or it's like it's been
I don't keep up all the time with us any too, especially because game
releases are so crazy. But he's super integral to the story. Yeah,
he's just been one of the driving forces behind it. So I think a
lot of people are like, well, it'd be really weird if he just
kind of disappeared, yes suddenly, or and it wouldn't feel right if they
killed him off in the game, that would be but getting someone really good
and it's been like super respectful. It just was a tragic, out of
nowhere thing losing Lance Reddick. So getting keeping the character going I think is
the best call, both for the game and for the fans. And the
way they've handled has been pretty damn good. Yes, agreed. Let's see
here. I was gonna get this going, but I'll do that in a
second. All right, let's let's move on here. Metroid Dread developer Mercury
Steam is working on two unannounced games. This is from my Nintendo News.
Now that Mercury Steam has finished Metroid Dread, there has been a lot of
questions about what the developer has is going to make after Metroid. Well,
there's somewhat of an answer to that. Yesterday, according to a financial report
from Nordisc Games, which owns a forty percent stake in Mercury Steam, Mercury
Steam is currently working on two large undisclosed titles. We already know that one
of them is in Action RPG, being developed with five or five games.
However, the other game is not known, though some fans think it could
be a new two D Metroid. You could see a tweet relaying the matter
that went out from someone that was covering the Nordisk news. Spanish developer Mercury
Steam is currently working on two a large undisclosed titles, according to Nordisk Games
financials. Mercury Steam is best known for Castlevania, Lord's a Shadow and twenty
twenty one's Metroid Dread. One of these games is a dark fantasy then not
one of those, but like one of the games they're working on is that
dark fantasy third person action RPG developed in conjunction with five or five games,
and that was announced in November twenty twenty one. Mercury Steam has steadily grown
to a team of more than two hundred developers, up from one hundred and
sixty in twenty twenty that I think it's very likely that they're also working on
a Metroid follow up. It's it makes sense because Metroid Dread, well,
you did pretty well for a Metroid game, and also like they built they
were designing the two D Metroid in a way of felt like, oh,
they have put laid down a foundation here that they can build on going forward.
And they could just do basically a direct sequel to this and continue that.
We can get one of those every you know, three to five years,
and that would be pretty cool. What do you think? I hope?
So I joked about Metroid Prime on Mora Kombat just to set Mike off,
but I really enjoyed Metroid Dread. I'm not a huge fan of Unkillable
enemies, but I think the way the game handled it and all that it
was fun. I didn't do the nixt thing and shoot every goddamn wall to
get everything complet done, but I really enjoyed it, So I hope they
are didn't. Didn't it also have like some development issues and trouble, Yes,
that was the going to be the other side of this is Mercury Steam
is uh, you know, not known for but there was some reports that
the the it was chaotic, chaotic development, and the people from Mercury Steam
have come out since then be like would a chaotic game lead to three million
in sales? And it's like, well, yeah, that happens all the
time. It's it's you know a lot of it's probably crunch, a lot
of it could be a stressful work environment beyond that, but yes, it's
definite. There was definitely reports of there being some problems at Mercury Steam.
Uh that scrutiny hopefully maintains so that we could see if that if that happens
again for these games. But it's definitely something that hopefully hopefully they can avoid.
But I do believe that, you know, Nintendo is not like cut
Ties in Mercury Steam or anything like that. It does seem like they want
to keep working with them that would then hopefully come with that increased levels.
I don't think. I don't think NDO Nintendo worries that much about crunch.
It's yeah, it's it's very different because everything I've always heard about Japanese studios
is that you're just expected to work extremely hard. That's just the culture,
right. So yeah, and it's looking at it from our perspective, we
look at and go, oh my god. But then you know, we
don't live there. We don't I don't know, I don't know it that
well, So I don't feel right commenting on it all the time, right,
I Mean, there's definitely concerns with crunch in Japan, Japanese game studios,
and they just their quality of life it's just way better and everything else,
like, and uh, their cost of living is just way lower,
and the money they get paid goes so so so much further that they make
up for it maybe some other ways. But yeah, crunch is still a
problem in Japan for sure. And you're right, so it's like that's probably
not something that they are looking to eliminate from the studios that they partner with,
but they also want to avoid a bat problematic headlines that make it look
like Nintendo doesn't care. It's something they want to avoid as well. It's
you know, you don't really get those stories out of many of the Japanese
studios. So if this studio in Spain is causing that like headaches like that,
that probably would draw some of the attention of the Nintendo and they would
try to do something about it. But I don't think that's something would involve
not making another successful game that would probably it's probably gonna sell pretty well,
especially keeping and keeping like Metroid in people's you know, the front of mine
for them in between, especially free games that are going to take for a
long time to develop. They will eventually have a new system out and they're
going to want to have a lot of stuff for it early. Again,
because it really helped with the Switch. Yes, having representation from each of
their big franchises in the first couple of years of the next Switch. That's
that they basically said that was their strategy when they were talking about maybe it's
a two D kid Icarus game, Well, that that would be fun too,
But I wanted to bring you do with those egg cants. In this
day and age, you can probably do something pretty naughty. You can.
Yeah, you can take him out there and introduce him to the bear and
say, hey, look at that guy. You can fuck that thing.
I am. I'm hopeful that we get a new Metroid two D game as
well. I hope so, and Nintendo says, like you mentioned, like
every franchise they want to have like at least one entry uh per system,
and I think that having a two D Metroid on the switch to pretty soon
would be great. Confusion arises over whether Modern Warfare three is coming to PS
four and Xbox one. This comes from Chris Scoean at VGC. A confusion
is arising among players as to weather Call of Duty Modern Warfare three is coming
to last gen consoles, as spotted on Twitter by YouTuber The Gaming Revolution,
the official Xbox page for Modern Warfare three only list Xbox Series X and S
as the game's planned platforms. However, The Gaming Revolution also notes that the
official PlayStation YouTube account has posted the Modern Warfare three teaser trailer with PS five
and PS four games in the headline. The video also includes the hashtag PS
five PS five games, PS four PS four games. There are three pretential
reasons for the discrepancy. The PlayStation YouTube channel puts either PS five games or
PS five and PS four games in all its trailer headlines, so it could
be that the employee responsible for naming the videos made in air and included PS
four when the game isn't coming to that format. Another possibility is that the
game is indeed coming to Last June systems, and that the Xbox page is
therefore at full The third possible reason is that both sites may in fact be
accurate, and the game's coming to PS four but not Xbox one. What
do you think is happening here, Jesse? So I go through I go
through the Xbox website a ton for reviews and covering stuff and all that,
And generally the way they list their games now is if it's on it's if
the purchase gets you the game on multiple platforms. It shows them in that
playable on action. Yes, but Activision obviously doesn't do smart delivery. So
normally it should say Modern Warfare three Xbox Series X and S at the top,
and that would indicate that that's the version for that. Maybe they just
didn't put up the page for Xbox One. Yeah, I had to look
at that side because probably Modern Warfare three is supposed to have this massive amount
of continuity for Modern Warfare two, which just came out last year and did
come to the last gen systems, So it would be awkward if you couldn't
do that continuation on the Xbox One where you bought Modern Warfare two, like
you bought it there and now this new game's coming out and saying, now,
bring all that stuff you did over there into this next game right now,
and they're like, actually, it's just like, no, we're not
gonna We're not gonna do that. You just get on the new system or
something like that. And so like they're they're they've gotta splash screen for Modern
Warfare three in the big reveal that's happening next week, and it just says
console, yeah, right or it So it's gonna be on everything. They'd
be real where if it wasn't. Yeah, I think so. I think
it's going to be everywhere. And I think this is probably just some confusions
and how it's being put out there, but they probably do move on from
last gen consoles next year, right, something new. You'd think so that's
about how much time it took last Gen and and maybe the a little bit
more. But that that and that also makes certain they'll be owned by Microsoft
by then, barring any insane thing, and Microsoft is pretty much a if
you just want to do next gen, do it, yep, like they're
they're not. They've moved on more quickly than pretty much anyone at this point,
which is really funny. After all the kurf fluffle around launch, with
the we believe in generations and all that stuff, Marino doing the Don matric.
We have a Modern Warfare three for you. It came out twelve years
ago. Yeah, yeah, that's right. If you want to play it,
it's available. There you go, all right. Overwatch two is released
on Steam and it's then immediately review bombed. This is from Chris Scully and
the VTC Internet Ye. Overwatch two has been released on Steam and has immediately
been met with a deluge of negative reviews. The game launched on Steam on
Thursday. At the time of the right of this writing, fifteen hours have
passed and the Overwatched two Steam page now has more than twenty five twenty five
thousand reviews, of which Steam says they are overwhelmingly negatives. Steams stats say
that only around fourteen percent of the users submitted reviews are positive, with many
players taking the opportunity to criticize the games free to play structure and it's ditching
of the much hyped hero missions. While it retains its charming design, wonderful
cast of characters, and some of the best multiplayer maps I've I've ever played
on Overwatch two brought a few enormous fundamental downgrades that leaves it critically flawed.
Flawed reads one of the reviews tagged most helpful on Steam. This was found
to happen, and I think this should it shouldn't be too much of a
surprise to Blizzard and to Activision. They are just going to have to push
through this, right, That's what happens when you have a game that is
in this situation. You've got to push through and try to get to the
other side. And in a couple of years, a couple years, when
it says mostly positive again, they could be like, hey, we look
what we'll look what we did, and that'd be proud of that, but
it's going to take a couple of years. It's a very angry fan base
to begin with. But also buying DLC didn't work. I don't know if
it does yet, but people were trying to buy their battle passes and their
PV unlocked. Yes, which is so when you buy something and it doesn't
work, you definitely immediately leave a very manly angry review. One of the
key things that causes people to leave bad reviews. Yes, and the monetization
behind the missions is bad. It's fifteen bucks, but so it's fifteen bucks.
Normally the season pass is ten. I think some people don't realize you
can either spend fifteen bucks and just get the three missions, or you can
do the bundle. Spend fifteen bucks, get the three missions and enough coins
for the battle pass. But when you do that it doesn't work. You
get very mad. Also, it's only it's three missions. They're about two
hours long because it's three missions out of according to the UI at fourteen and
there's it gonna be fifteen bucks every time for three Like, there's just a
lot of anger around it. Because the game's really fun. New Hero is
really good, it looks good, it runs great. I really enjoy it.
But thanks to Bobby Cottock making them call it overwatched two supposedly allegedly,
and a bunch of other various monetization factors where people are like, you know,
loup boxes really aren't that bad when you can earn them so often.
It's just it's spiraled down, player engagements down, all these different things.
And in the end, I do think things like the game Pass Ultimate Perk
which yesterday, where you get all the new characters and one skin for them,
like Xbox won't do shitty monetization. They get yelled at way too hard
by their families, so they just are like, like Jesus Christ, no,
we won't. And the Halo system as as bemoaned as Halo's ben since
it's launched, where they just did not have any content for like two years.
Their monetization says should be this standard where your battle passes never expire,
all the seasonal events are always completely free. Nothing in the store is Fomo
is just always there, you can always get it. Yeah, And I
really hope that they start pushing that into more of these acquisitions, because Bethesda
doesn't do a ton ESO was already always fine follow seventy six was fine.
But if they can turn around some of in a little bit because Activision makes
way too much money for them to change it completely. But if they can
lessen the shittiness, then I think people would be very happy. Yeah,
I And it's something that again that probably will happen slowly because Overwatch is very
valuable and uh and the you know, Blizzard and eventually Microsoft, they're gonna
want to steward it back to a place of respectability and that'll be worth it,
and they there's you know, roadmaps out there for how to accomplish that,
and they'll be able to probably slowly push this back into a place where
people feel good about it. But it'll take time. And you know,
obviously right now people people on Steam are just gonna be like, well,
we're gonna let you have the shellacking and you know, we'll check back in
in a couple of years. It's it's tainted right now. Overwatch two kind
of similar to what happened with Halo Inpindent, where people just like felt bad
about playing it because everyone was always complaining and that's a real thing and you
really have to worry about that and you'll have to sort I think I think
we've watched two is going to have to bring in that new group. And
the good news is for them being free to play on Steam, they're probably
gonna be exposed to a lot of new players going forward that they wouldn't have
been otherwise, and that would give them the chance to build up that positive
word of mouth again. But we'll see if they could pull that off.
Researchers find China's game time limits were ineffective in reducing excessive play. This comes
from Brendan Saint Clair at Games Industry doppi is. China has a imposed strict
game time limitations for miners, partly out of concerns they could develop addictions,
but a new paper published in Nature Human Behavior found no evidence that the rules
had any impact on excessive gaming at all. The research researchers partner with Unity
Unity to examine more than seven billion hours of playtime and around two point four
billion Chinese gamer profiles from mid August of twenty nineteen to mid January twenty twenty,
a span of time that includes the imposition the imposition of an hour and
a half daily playtime limit for minors, or three hours over holidays. We'll
get into this, but just real quick is this story saying that Unity and
I'm not too surprised that this is the fact, but that Unity like basically
can track the telemetry of people using games made in Unity like period. Is
that you think that's where the state is coming from? Is that Unity Like
if you're making a game and Unity of all that telemetry gets reported back to
the developer and to Unity itself, so that it has this massive trove of
data about how people play a bunch of different games all around the world.
I wouldn't be surprised if that was just the thing the Chinese government wants.
They want to have all that information. In the meantime, Unity also gets
access all of those the government. The government there just really wants to know
what everyone's doing all the time. It's weird that the Unity could have all
that information and not and still be kind of bad it's doing. Why Rilla,
why is my my metic quest two three hundred bucks when it costs them
about seven hundred to make? It's because telemetry. They just they wanted telemetry
data. So all these companies, that's like one of the main things they
go after is data data data you accept on all your EULAs every time without
reading a single word in their half and two point four billion Chinese gamer profiles.
That's that's a lot of Chinese gamer profiles, are there? Is there
two by four billion Chinese people? I thought it was like like one.
It's a little over one. I thought, so it's probably people that are
like five manning World war Craft. Yeah, yes, exactly. So okay,
I got a farm that gold. You know, I might actually reach
out to Unity and get some clarification about some of this stuff. But either
way, so, heavy gaming was defined as an individual plane for four or
more hours a day, six or more days per week, the researchers.
The researchers found no credible evidence for overall reduction in the prevalence of heavy playtime
following the implementation of regulations. In fact, they found players were slightly more
likely to engage in heavy gaming after the regulations went into effect, but the
game was not enough to be considered stas statistically meaningful. The work presented provided
it provides a case study for understanding how a government's policy decisions affect or do
not affect the lives of real people on a grand scale, and forms a
blueprint of future data led public policy, said the studies lead researcher, doctor
David Zendel of the University of New York. It is now possible to attractably
analyze billions of hours of direct digital behavior data. This could lead to better
and more effective policymaking. Governments, industry insider, industry stakeholders, and academics
should rise to this challenge. Should they. I don't know if they should.
I don't know if they I don't know if government, you know,
in industry, stakeholders or whatever, with all of that data in front of
them, have the capacity to accurately process what it means and then to understand
what the best action of the course of action to take on that stuff is.
In fact, the best course of action might be just just stand back
and stand stand down. We don't need your help on this stuff. We're
cool, thank you. I mean, most of them are just going to
try and figure out, well, how can we monetize this more? Right,
of course, And then that's the whole point of the data, right
then that's the reason they gather in the first place, is so that unity
can then sell this information and nice you know, produced bundles and be like,
this is what you need to do if you want to make money,
Like that's the whole idea here, but the idea that it's then being translated
being used for research. You know, you could see on its face how
that is a good thing. But even the researchers like, give this to
the government, let them make better policies out how to keep kids from playing
games. What what are you talking about? Just chill out on that stuff.
The industry lobbyists come in and say no, no, no, ye,
just let us have that now, and then we monetize it and we
give you kick that. Oh yes. The government's like cool, yes,
exactly, and then they will do exactly that. Uh well do there we
go? There? It's sad. There it is where we've lost a headline
here at some point. Uh, there we go. Uh gonna keep going
here. Uh, there's a there's a there's a Pokemon plush that what looks
like a penist Jesse. I know, I was, I was. I
was very excited when I saw it. Immediately shared it to my unperverted weed
friends on the xbox Er discord. Yes. Uh, this is from Ashley
Barton at Kataku Good News. The Pokemon Company released a wiglet plush on its
official Pokemon Center store. Bad News. It looks like a dick. That's
not a bad news, Ashley. Not a human dick, but like the
platonic ideal of an alien dick. The US government doesn't want us to know
about. Very good. There's not much to be done about that. The
water type Pokemon Wiglet not to be confused with the similooking ground type digglet,
so it is different from digglet. But whatever, Apparently there are a different
species. I haven't played come in twenty years. Yeah, listen, I
do not begrudge you that mistake. It is a stringy white worm that is
ten and a quarter inches long to be exact. According to its Pokemon Center
description, debuting in the twenty twenty two open world role playing games Pokemon Scarlet
and Violet, Wigglet loves the beach, though it's shy. It gets cold
in the water. I bet it presents its cocktail sausage shaped pink nose proudly
to society, but it buries the rest of its body deep within the sand.
The Pokemon Center accurately represents that as an oblong sheet white plush with a
cheery pinkish tip extending from a puffy patch of ground, or a dick extending
from its balls if you glance at it really quickly. In any case,
this long, pokey plush version of the Garden Eel Pokemon is ready to stand
tall as part of your plush collection, perch on your couch, coffee table,
or bookshelf, says the Pokemon Center's description of Wigglet. They know what
they're doing, right, Jesse, you know what they're doing over there.
I know what they're doing. I know what they're doing. Oh wait,
you might be muted. I think you might be muted, Jess you I'm
not holding the button. Sorry, I pushed to talk as otherwise it's shitty.
I think they might just be dildo sheets. They had extras up and
they just made it a little diglet face for it. To tell them that's
that's that's that's the up cycling. That's a good way to do things.
I should call him, went one popular fan reaction on Twitter. This is
going to rag me up my asshole set another equal but opposite reaction. In
addition to its length, the twenty five dollars Wiglet plush boasts honorable girth at
four and three quarters inches embroidered soft fabric at the Pokemon center indicates and it's
bindable body lets you create custom poses, so you could do puppetry of the
of the Wiglet. Yeah, you shove a couple of these, so you
take out the stuffing. You just shove some stuff up in there and you're
good to go. Yeah, you're just saying, get bridget. You just
gotta go. Rot it up, Just rot it up. Lollipop chains I'll
Rebake titled Lollipop chains I'll RePOP delayed the summer twenty twenty four. As we
move on from Wiglet and his turgid self from sal Romano at jamat gimats excuse
me, Dragami Games has delayed the Lollipop Chainsaw remake from its previously planned twenty
twenty three released window to summer twenty twenty four, as well as announced it's
an official title to be Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP. Platforms were not announced. This
is not the only game getting delayed right now. Devolver Digital pretty much delayed
everything that it was imaginable. It was so good. It was a good
that they did. They still got a couple, but they didn't even they
didn't date the couple that are still this year and then like Plucky Squire and
other one's going next year in the Devolver Delayed showcase exactly. So I mean,
if you if your game needs more time, I would say, now,
there's never been a better time for a delay than right now. Getting
out of August, get out of October, get out of September, maybe
November, maybe we got called duty called January, February. Like you go
December through February. I am, I love you. If you want to
do that, please any of those games, like anything in what's like,
just go in December right now that that would be relatively safe. But if
you want to get out into early twenty twenty four, like that, that's
gonna get You know, a lot of games are going to come out then
as well, but it's not going to be as busy as it is right
now. Right now, it just feels relentless. I know. There's like
this this constant deluge of console war idiots going on about Balter's Gate three,
and I'm like, thank Christ it is delayed on Xbox, because I have
no idea how I could have covered it if it wasn't delayed, because like
I played three hours and I got almost nowhere in on PC and I love
them like boy, I can't wait to review this. I really hope it
doesn't come out to like January or February. Yep. I bet they'll figure
out how to get that went out relatively quickly though. So do you think
it's just it's really smart on their part because they moved up a month they
avoid Starfield. Yeah, they release right when Starfield is but on the console
that doesn't get Starfield. Yep. And then once Starfield has been out for
a while, they can release on Xbox and they've got three awesome launches and
it's just really smart. It is. Uh, yes, it is.
Really they played their cards the best way that they possibly could, I think,
and it's gonna they're gonna get rewarded for it in terms of lots of
money. That's the theme of the today's episode. Uh okay, what do
we got going here? We got a poll from yesterday where we asked,
and I'm gonna good a right here for everybody, have you ever bought a
cosmetic skin in a game that was priced higher than ten dollars? Thirty three
percent said yes, sixty seven sent percent said no. Is that from yesterday
or is that from the one from before. Oh no, that's right,
that was from the day before. It said twenty one hours ago, and
I just didn't hit refresh. Have you watched Twisted Metal? There we go,
there's the new one. Yes, I binged it. It's five percent.
Yes, I watched its six percent, thirty two percent said no,
but I will, and fifty eight percent says no, I won't ever.
Uh yeah. That's actually pretty good for people who are at least intending to
watch it, if you, because that puts it over you know, near
fifty percent, you know, paramount thing. That's pretty good because they're still
building themselves up to where like Disney end Netflix all them are. Ye,
I'm interested, but I'm so sick of spending for streaming services that no.
And yes for the other one, I finally did. I bought the one
Punchman bundle for Overwatch two with Microsoft reward points, which was like twenty bucks.
Yep, it's uh yes, and I'm I'm I'm kind of like the
same with Twisted Metal, where it's like I'm curious, but I'm just gonna
keep watching the lost. Do you know what I can't? I can give
you a press email. They sent me a code for three months of peacock
to watch it. I'm going to watch it, all right. I'll send
you that fantastic and tell me all about it. All right. Let's see
here, I got a pull question for tomorrow. But before we get to
that, Jesse, why don't you talking a wiggle question for tomorrow? For
Monday too? I'm that's all. Listen. You see wigglet and you just
can't even think straight anymore? Jesse? Where can people find you and your
your your wiglet only xbox Era only fans that Nick keeps talking about wanting to
do, But it's xbox Er dot com. We're our Patreon dot com for
its chexbox Era. We're doing a sick Neickflix our patron and YouTube member only
movie podcast because we really needed to get them to stop talking about movies for
an hour during the main video game podcast. Yeah, I understand. So
we've got a We've got the stupidest combo of all time. Tonight we have
Schindler's List because Nick had never seen it, matched with no hard feelings,
our rated rom com. It's it's a it's a weird mix of movies,
but that's fun. It'd be fun. That's cool. It should be good.
I'm excited to hear about that. We we actually just started our Columbo
podcast Columbros recorded our first episode yesterday, me and Mike. That's right now.
It's only for Patreon members and stuff like that. I love Colombo.
Yeah, what was the one that was the boomer show I would watch growing
up? That was the one they were trying to do mash and some other
songs. Can't do Matt Locke. Yeah, keep me over there on on
Columbo Colombo. Excuse me, but it was a lot of fun. That
first episode, directed by Steven Spielberg, is just fantastic. Okay, new
Paul. Have you ever tried GTA role playing? Yes? No, but
I want to know, but I would try in GTA six and just straight
up no. So that is going to be going up on YouTube dot com
slash at giant bomb. The community tab there has all our polls. Feel
free to vote on that and we'll get to that on Monday on giant bomb
dot com. Speaking at GiantBomb dot com, what do we have happening today?
We're gonna be doing a upf I believe that is happening at one pm
Eastern. Everybody. That's that's ten am Pacific, so a little bit earlier
than you know time has been traditionally. We're moving it up a little bit
to help, uh, you know, because we're balancing people on two coast
a little bit more. So that's going to help out one pm Eastern lookout
for that. I think we're playing We should be able to say it now
because that we're playing it now. I think the embargoes up moving out too.
I did see a review of that, So we're moving out to we're
gonna try to play that. That means no Paulter's Gate three, which I
was really trying to do. Maybe I'll find another slot for that that because
that's happening at one pm though I might do Mortal Kombat afterward. But we're
also there's a couple of quick looks me and Mike. We're talking about recordings.
So it's all just kind of we're trying to balance a few things.
So you know what's fun trying to balance when you try to balance Me in
the US, John in the UK, and Nick and Australia. Yeah,
that's fun. Yeah. At a certain pint, you just gotta be like
Nick, we don't care about your health and sleep safety, anymore. You
just gotta do it when we can do it, Like, I'm sorry,
Australia, deal with it all right. I think I think I wraps up
just about everything. Jesse, thank you so much for taking time to talk
with me about video Go today. And look, my cellular internet held up
just fine. I feel happy. Yeah, so that that T mobile hotspot
really good. I'm I'm so glad that that worked out. It's like that
was literally my only option. Yes, Jesse got a little bit screwed by
his Spheny was not going to be able to be on the Internet for a
year. A day after they said you don't get the internet for a year,
I'm like, what the hell. They're like, oh, your IP
was hijacked and somebody was using it, but it's still it's your fault.
So by thank you, Spectrum, Jesus. Okay, I gotta I have
Spectrum, so I gotta own So they said, oh, you you downloaded
cyberpunk and I'm like, I own cyberpunk on gog. I don't have to
illegally torrent cyberpunk and They're like, we don't care. I'm glad that the
five G internet future is here for you. So that you're able to get
high high enough to do this. Yes, this it worked really well.
So that's a that's fantastic. And you know what, we'll have you back
on game next mornings here in the future on jiant Bomb. But do have
John because it'd be really funny. Trust me, I know the bet I
know what we're doing there. Absolutely, Joe, we'll get you on on
here. Thanks for watching, everybody, you're the best audience of gaming.
I'll see you on Monday. Until then, have a good one, take
care of yourself. Goodbye.